You're most exotic or unusual AM DXing location.

[Icangelp]

Without a doubt, my most exotic location was while on a summer Pacific sailing trip in the mid 60s with a friend and his dad. There were 3 of us young guys, and we all loved to DX, and the dad was a ham. Our equipment consisted of a Hammarlund HQ 180A, a Collins manufactured R390A and my Zenith Trans Oceanic R1000. We brought two home made loop antennas and also 2,000 feet of copper wire for a beverage antenna just in case we made land with enough flat for the antenna. We started in King Salmon CA, and ended up in Australia (in two separate segments)

I lost my copy of the log book a few years back, but in our travels from King Salmon to Australia we verified hundreds of AM stations in the Pacific, Asia, North and South America, Europe, the Middle East and even Africa.

Hearing some of those Pacific Island stations was the best part of my listening experience and included American and Western Samoa, Tahiti, Trust Territory, Soloman Islands and Cook Islands. Most of the islands AM stations operated a very low power, which made it a challenge, though most broadcast on the tropical bands also, an easier catch.

Along the way, we heard numerous US stations, Central and South America, Australia and New Zealand.

Over the years, my business travels have enabled me to AM DX in Asia and other places, although there have been significant lapses in my interest in the hobby.

I wish I had been able to visit Europe and listen to the legendary RTL and the various pirates back during the day, but I never did.

Anyone done some serious "beach" DXing, or DXed using a beverage antenna?

 

[BIGSTICK]

On Ipanema Beach in Rio.

 

[radiorob2.0]

The North Carolina barrier Island are a DX treasure trove. My recent trip was Topsail Island. While on a fishing pier using a C Crane radio here are the daytime highlights:

540 WFLF Orlando
550 Orange Park, FL
560 Miami
580 Orlando
600 Jacksonville
610 Miami
660 New York
690 Jacksonville
880 New York

 

[icybluelake]

1. Puerto Rico. It's hard for me with my limited Spanish to make heads or tails of what I heard, but my guesses led me to thinking I was making some good catches.

2. Driving around the southwestern US at night. Not exotic to most people, but different enough from most places I've lived and traveled to make it well worthwhile.

 

[Tom Wells]

A little used, primitive road in New South Wales, Australia near Yarangobilly Caves.
I parked off the side of road in the most remote place I've ever been in my life and dxed on a 1-tube regenerative radio until
the wee hours, then slept in the car. I had just built the radio the night before from a kit purchased in Ballarat at a radio museum.
I pulled out 200 feet of wire to a tree and stuck a screwdriver in the ground.
I think one vehicle passed all night.

 

[gar hi]

I guess if you consider Florida exotic, it would then be right in my home. On any night, I can hear stations from New York to Chicago to Denver.

 

[Steve_Green]

I second the Florida vote, Gar. I've never been out of the country except for Montreal, so the NSW and South Pacific and Ipanema locales probably will remain out of reach here for comparison's sake.

But Florida has awesome geographic vibes for northerners.

Three locales there :
1. A screened-in porch facing east on Fairmont Avenue Clearwater in 1969. I was visiting a radio buddy at the time. KYOK Houston was a regular there on a Philco transistor at night. In the day, I taped everything within range. This was almost 40 years ago and most of the music and listeners were still on AM.

2. The intercom kitchen radio at my Aunt's and Uncle's in New Port Richey. It was a stuccoed home, a newer development, across the street from a vast field of weeds that went to the Gulf. Most recalled catch there was KWKH and their overnight 'Radio Ranch' in 1980.

3. The Folks' vast screened-in garage, facing due north. Great place to DX both daytime and nighttime. They're in Lady Lake, the north-central part of the state. I've used everything there from a Lafayette HA-600 to Dad's Radio Shack AM-FM and a GE Superadio II.

4. At an observatory on the north fork of Long Island. Naturally, coastal Connecticut came in louder than most of the Long Island stations did, but while the gang was working on setting up telescope equipment to 'hear' Jupiter, I was spinning tape and taking in the market's AM fare. 1984 or so. I'd also play the piano that they had in the meeting room. And be ordered to stick to DX, please.

Location does count, I guess. The nicer the locale, the more I can put up with substandard DX. But I don't believe I'd be the only one here who considers which wall of a den will provide the best daydream backdrop for in between the unIDs.

Thanks for the memories, guys!

 

[gar hi]

My first big AM DXing memory was 36 years ago when I was 11. The family took Easter vacation from New Jersey to Miami Beach. My older brother was driving me around at night when he turned to WABC which was booming in. Cousin Brucie was on at the time. I then got my portable radio when we arrived back at the hotel and tuned to WABC. Not fully understanding the dynamics of the DXing thing, I remember wondering why the frequency had nothing there in the morning.

 

[radioman148]

Hawaii is always a great place to DX from. Before midnight Hawaiian time you can pick up lots of west coast US stations. Even 5KWs with directionals out into the ocean come in well.
Before sunrise in Hawaii you can hear alot of far east stuff. I can never identify it because I can't understand the languages, but it's there.

 

[davideduardo]

Anyone done some serious "beach" DXing, or DXed using a beverage antenna?

I had a favorite location right on the beach in Puerto Rico in the 70's and 80's. Guánica is a small beachfront town on the southern shore of the Island, and during those decades had no noisy street lamps or much else after about 9 PM. A balcony, the R390 or even an Icom and a loop would produce fantastic deep south american and many african catches, while the mountains nulled a lot of the US and Dominican Republic.

Second best, but not a beach, was using the tower of HCRM1 in Quito (on a hilltop at 10,100 feet AMSL) as an antenna... obviously, shutting the radio station off to do so. While not directional, a huge AM vertical was fantastic for split frequency reception.

 

[gr8oldies]

Brent,did you see The Girl from Ipanema? The beach at Sarasota FL was pretty exotic for me with my Sony ICF5900w which I miss. Also downtown Miami where almost everything was in Spanish and the northern clears were no where.

 

[kudzooter]

While by no stretch of the word is it "exotic," my area here on Bull Shoals Lake just south of the Ark/Mo border has been showing some pretty interesting DX activity the past two+ months. Mid-afternoon on a very cloudy Sunday the first weekend in November, I accidentally hit the button to switch my '93 Beretta's factory-stock radio to AM. Before I could return to FM, I noticed a loud, clear signal on 1690. Kept it there as I drove down the main city street from Highway 14 to the Corps of Engineers recreation park, staying under power lines the whole three miles. Just as I got out from under the lines, by driving to the end of the boat-launch area, I was amazed to hear them identify as WVON, Chicago. Since then, I've experimented with three or four other locations within a short distance of my home, even going down dirt trails to evade those power lines; weather has varied from the same heavy, low clouds that first day to absolutely clear; times from late afternoon nearing sundown, to as early as 12:30 in the lunch hour. Quite regularly pick up 1620 WTAW, 1640 WTMI, 1650 KCNA, 1670 WTDY, 1690 WVON, and 1700 KKLF. Also occasionally ID the 1620 talker from Pensacola, and get the Des Moines 1700 sports-talker instead of KKLF. Most unusual has been a little below the X-band:-- one cloudy afternoon from around 4 til almost 5, I drove east along the state line and listened to a very strong signal from 1560 KGOW from the Houston TX area -- even more unusual, continuing my drive the next morning, which was very cold but totally sunny and clear, heard KGOW again from 9 til 9:45.
As a DXer back in the early 1950s, I logged and verified quite a few upper band (then, ending at 1600) stations around dusk, as well as the usual good reception after dark. But I've been surprised at the regularity of the reception noted above. Am now waiting til we get into spring, to see if there's any seasonal difference.

 

[cyberdad]

I wouldn't call in exotic, but one morning in a private wood frame residence about 90 minutes after sunrise near Cologne, Germany. Yacht boy 300 picking up standard am broadcast stuff from various points all over Europe.....including UK, France, Netherlands, Italy, Poland and even Russia. This was a cloudy morning in early March about eight years ago.

Similar experience a year or two later in Broadway, England....about 90 miles North of London. Complete with the Russians and several stations from Ireland and Scandinavia this time.

 

[schmave]

Exotic it isn't, but I'd love to go back to the Florida panhandle and DX. I last did so on a vacation to Panama City Beach in 2004 and while I got to hear quite a bit I'd hoped for, four years of reading and participating on these boards would make me a much wiser DXer in terms of knowing exactly what I was hearing.
Going out 20 or 30 miles from PCB into the Gulf would be even more interesting.

 

[BIGSTICK]

Brent,did you see The Girl from Ipanema? The beach at Sarasota FL was pretty exotic for me with my Sony ICF5900w which I miss. Also downtown Miami where almost everything was in Spanish and the northern clears were no where.

lol, Thier were definitely some lookers. ;D

 

[phil]

I lugged my Zenith TransOceanic with its 5 lb (?) battery pack when I shipped out to Korea in 1953. I remember going up on deck on the troop ship at night, but don't remember what I picked up. I was surfing the shortwave bands mostly, and looking for English language broadcasts. It seems like I got a lot from Austrailia, as we crossed from Seattle to Japan. I've thought many times how nice it would have been to have a small multi-band transistor radio like I have now.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Egpyt - on a cruise on the Nile. Daytime the AM band was extraordinarily blank, each town had a little station that faded about the time another town came into range. At night, a treasure of European and Middle Eastern stuff. I could not log a single American station, however.

 

[kc0ltv]

June 2008, Morocco, a lodge located next to the Erg Chebbi dunes at the edge of the Sahara. Off the grid - no road connection (to get there and back you followed a path in the desert called a "piste") and power provided by a generator. During the day, there was virtually nothing audible on my DX-398 except distant high-power stations. During the night, the band was full, but much less exciting than I would expect it to be - mostly Spanish stations. The high-point, however, was DXing E-skip right on a dune, straight from Italy. Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu9TjieyoG0

DXing at a similar location (in terms of remoteness) in Costa Rica near Vulcan Arenal brought in an MW band full of Spanish stations, but I wasn't able to DX for much time.

 

[BRNout]

The most exotic place was probably Fort Portal in western Uganda. It was about 10 pm at night and I had my little Sangean DT-300 with me in a hotel room with no TV. FM was nothing to write home about; all you could get were local relays of national stations from Kampala.

However, it was the MW side that was interesting. It was quite the opposite of what the previous posters heard north of the Sahara - in Morocco and Egypt. Here, the band was dead - aside from a dance music program that faded in and out from the silence. The language sounded Arabic, though I could have been mistaken. Other than that, I briefly heard faint whisps of what sounded like Arabic broadcasts fading in and out on one or two frequencies during band scans but overall it was silent. No interference, almost no static. Never experienced anything like that before. If I had one of my stronger radios with me at the time, I'll bet I could have pulled some interesting stuff out of that silence!

Have done quite a bit of dxing from Central and parts of South America and will be in Guanacaste, Costa Rica in about a week with my Eton E5. I'll see what I can pick up from there.